People who never had the courage to raise their eyes before now dared to point fingers. It all started by a spark, that turned into flames. Flames that turned the destiny of Middle East, flames that took away long-serving leaders, flames that started the Arab Spring.
17th Dec’2010: TUNISIA
A 20-year-old boy named Mohamed Bouazizi, who use to work as a vegetable vendor started his day fresh and full of hope.
10:30 am: Reaching the market, he catches the glimpse of some security officials around his vegetable cart. As he approaches them to free his cart and start his day, officials start mishandling him and his belongings. After he preaches for support from local people, the officials take offense and charge him against spreading hatred for them. After that officials start humiliating him, use bad words for his mother, unmarried sisters, and late father. The situation got out of hand when an official started physically harming Bouazizi. No one from the crowd dared to intervene, everyone just stood and stared. Some people even started recording the whole event.
Humiliated and embarrassed 20-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi was too young to let this incident go away from his mind. The discomfiture and discomposure made him take a step which fueled each person oppressed by the dictatorship with a sense of revolt.
11:30 am: An hour after the public humiliation faced by Bouazizi, he walks in front of town hall and performs the act of self-immolation in presence of the same officials and hundreds of people. Some cared to bring cloth while some cared to bring phones and camera. While the cloth helped the fire to extinguish, the phones and camera helped the fire to outspread.
As the video of self-immolation by a 20-year-old boy in Tunisia reached the world through Facebook. The world reacted with like and share and Tunisia reacted with revolt and uprising.
27th Dec’10: The first glimpse of an uprising took place after 10 days of the event, when 1000 people marched in the streets against their own government due to increasing unemployment, increasing corruption and the increasing human right violation by the officials.
The Tunisian president, Ben Ali who was in the power for almost 24 years was highly loathed by his own people. He was an odious dictator, who confiscated civilian rights and implemented military rule in Tunisia.
As the days passed, the uprising became larger in number and cogent in intention.
4th Jan’11: Mohamed Bouazizi was declared dead in a local hospital. This fueled up the ongoing uprising, more and more Tunisians joined the uprising. the slogan for the uprising “asn-sha’b yurid isqat an-nizam” (the people want to bring down the regime).
6th Jan’11: This date is marked as the biggest strike to take place in Tunisian history, where 95% of Tunisian lawyers and people from trade union joined the uprising.
14th Jan’11: Everyday strikes and protests trembled the president, Ben Ali, as a result, he declared Emergency with military rule.
Which means the military will take over the security in Tunisian and has the authority to open fire at any ongoing protests or gathering.
As soon as he declared an emergency with military rule. 80,000 Tunisians marched towards the president house, observing the crowd military officials handed over their weapons and joined the uprising against Ben Ali.
Without the military, the power of Ben Ali turned fragile, as a result, he resigned from the post and fled away for Malta under Libyan protection.
Tunisian people honored the sacrifice of a 20-year-old boy by introducing democracy. Mohamed Ghannouchi was elected as an interim Prime minister.
Tunisia became a success story for all the oppressed people facing dictatorship. Libya, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen were some of the Arab countries which followed the uprising and stood up against their own government. This uprising in the middle east got famous worldwide as
“THE ARAB SPRING”.